13th MÓZG FESTIVAL - International Contemporary Music and Visual Arts Festival

Come Down To Earth Orchestra (concert)
8:00 PM

It is a project created especially for 13th Mózg Festival and it consists of musicians from Warsaw and Bydgoszcz. The orchestra will be conducted by Marek Chołoniewski. He is a composer, sound artist, performer and lecturer; he is the head of Electroacoustic Music Studio at the Academy of Music and Audiosphere Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He founded the Muzyka Centrum Artistic Association. Since 2011 he has been the chairman of the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music. He is the initiator and director of Audio Art festival, founder and co-creator of many bands e.g.: Pociąg Towarowy,ch&k&k, dizzy kinetics. He is the author of many artistic projects, instrumental or electroacoustic compositions, sound and video installations, interactive, spatial, audio-visual and network projects.

The members of the orchestra are experienced musicians as well as young people, who are just starting their adventure with music. The thing they have in common is openness towards experiment and the will to experience new things.

The members of the orchestra:

Anna Niestatek - voice
Małgorzata Musialik - voice
Alicja Piotrowska - voice

Maksymilian Gwinciński - flute
Piotr Kikta - clerinette
Tim Sanford - soprano sax
Ilia Belorukov - alto sax and objects
Mateusz Lubiewski - el. guitar
Adam Kempa - el. guitar
Artur Kujawa - el. guitar
Maciej Szwarc - el. guitar

Daniel Mackiewicz - dafa, tabla
Marcin Karnowski - hang drum
Jacek Buhl - drums
Tomasz Gołda - drums

Krzysztof Ostrowski „Freeze” - elektronics
Rafał Tworek - piano
Piotr Grygor - modular synthesizer
Antoni Majewski - cello
Jarosław Majewski - double bass
Jonas Kocher - accordion

Pieces performed:

Marek Chołoniewski - Fala Entropii 7' (Alternatively Assemblages)
Bogusław Schaeffer - Media 8'
Keir Neuringer - Dodging Bullets 22'

Joey Baron
& Robyn Schulkowsky (concert)
9:00 PM

Unconstrained by standard tonal and rhythmic paradigms, the duo of master musicians Robyn Schulkowsky and Joey Baron continue to explore the precise, noisy, and beautiful. The duo's past 15 years have included the release of the CD “Dinosaur Dances”, a residency at Grand Central Station NYC, ongoing work with data expert dr. Nilam Ram and Studio Lab “Playing The Archives”, close work with composer Christian Wolff, along with performances and workshops in South America, the U.S.,Europe, and China. The duo's second album is scheduled for release in December.

Joey Baron started playing at age 9. Over the years, he has developed a unique,masterful approach to making music with the drum set, evident in his extended tenures with jazz icons Jim Hall, Steve Kuhn, and John Abercrombie. His long-term collaboration with Bill Frisell was documented and released “JUST LISTEN” on Relative Pitch Records in 2013. Presently, Mr. Baron's activities include solo concerts, workshops, master classes, plus ongoing projects with John Zorn, “Now This” with Gary Peacock and Marc Copeland, “Sound Prints” with Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas and the new trio of Danish guitarist Jakob Bro with bassist Thomas Morgan.

Percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky is a world-renowned experimental music performer and composer engaged in continuous exploration of new sound dimensions and development of new and unusual instruments. She has premiered and recorded some of the most important percussion works of the 20th and 21st centuries, performing in solo tours around the globe. Schulkowsky works or has worked with composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Christian Wolff, artists Guenther Uecker and Manon de Boer, choreographers Merce Cunningham and Sasha Waltz and many others.

Ilia Belorukov & Gaudenz Badrutt (concert)
9:00 PM

Gaudenz Badrutt (CH) and Ilia Belorukov (RU) decided to work as a duo unit just recently, but they have a story behind it. After they first met in 2013, they played a tour in Russia as a trio with the accordion-player Jonas Kocher (CH) in 2014. In 2016 Ilia visited Biel (where Gaudenz and Jonas live) for a residency in Espace Libre in March, together with Alexander Markvart (RU), where the music turned out in a deeper universe. Gaudenz & Ilia play improvised and electroacoustic music that explores relationships between silence and very loud sounds and everything in between. They use acoustic instruments and/or electronic devices. Some of the main topics of their work is improvisation as context for producing sounds and environment as part of the collective's music.

Ilia Belorukov is a musician from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. He works in the directions of improvised, noise and electroacoustic music. He’s a member of different projects with local and foreign musicians. He collaborates with artists who work in other musical directions (from hardcore and metal to academic contemporary music); with dancers and painters; with theater. Ilia practices an experimental approach of sound extraction on alto saxophone with objects, uses electronics and other instruments. He is also a founder of Intonema label and one of curators of Spina!rec label.

Gaudenz Badrutt (electronics & computer) began his career as a pianist in the field of contemporary classic music. Since almost 20 years he works as an electronic musician in the field of improvised, experimental music. He is mainly known as one half of the electroacoustic duo strøm (together with Christian Müller, electronics and bass clarinet), as well as part of the duo Jonas Kocher (accordion). His music is coined by a very instrumental use of computer/live sampling and electronic devices. He is further occupied in the fields of electronic composition and sound & video installation.

Supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council and the city of Biel/Bienne

Ecofilms about us

The selection of films for Mózg Festival this year will be devoted to ecology, just like the entire festival. The subtitle Ecofilms about us is an observation that indicates how conscious we are about our own destructive character and how few conclusions we draw from it. We will reflect upon the influence that mankind has on the natural environment and the consequences we are going to face in the future. In the film “The Salt of the Earth” we will see our planet through the eyes of one of the greatest photographers in the history. We will take a closer look at a human, civilisation, the condition of the Earth and together with the makers of the film we will wonder what is “the salt of the Earth”. We will also get the chance to admire the rainforest, beautifully photographed in 4K resolution in the film “Once Upon A Forest”. We will learn how much time it takes to restore an equatorial forest. Thanks to “Homo Sapiens” we will catch a glimpse of what the Earth would look like if humans disappeared. We will also get the chance to see “Punkt Krytyczny. Energia OdNowa” directed by Łukasz Bluszcz (a meeting with the author is also planned). It is the first Polish full-length film about ecology. Then “Princess Mononoke”, a masterpiece of Japanese animation, will present a vision of the end of nature and the beginning of the era of technology. This film reflects the drama of mankind’s greediness and predatory approach towards the surrounding environment.

The film selection is accompanied with a commentary of guests and will provide the audience with the possibility to form their own opinions on what the relationship o mankind and nature looks like and what it should look like. Let’s come down to Earth and reflect upon ourselves.

“Seasons”, dir. Jacques Perrin,
Jacques Cluzaud (movie)
9:00 PM

This time the creators of the film invite us to the amazing world of the great wilderness and allow us to look through the eyes of its inhabitants. We discover the history of nature, our continents and mankind since the ice age until modern times. Thousands of years ago Europe was covered with endless forest, which was indivisibly ruled by wisents, foxes, wolves, moose and deer. Their kingdom was the great wilderness that spread along the entire continents and whose heart was beating in Białowieża Forest, which today is its’ only remaining part. An amazing story about the wildest nature untouched by the hand of a human takes place in the very heart of this forest filled with secrets.

Polemica (concert)
GODZ. 22:00

POLEMICA is an international 4-piece thinkrock band based in Italy. From the name to the lyrics to the music, POLEMICA challenges social models and provokes critical questions. Though the project is new, the musicianship is honed, and the spirit is infectious. Hilary Binder pours her heart and intellect into the emotional and politicized lyrics, deftly delivered over solid, and occasionally quirky, music, which is collectively composed. Giulio and Zilvio met on stage a few years ago and in December 2015, after a short collaboration, decided to start a new band. Vik soon joined, thus, the decisive next step was to find the "voice". The search ended when they met Hilary, a multifaceted artist who right away agreed to try out as the singer in the new project. The band began working on new material, inserting Hilary's lyrics full of introspection and irony.

Giulio - bass
Hilary - vocals
Vik - drums
Zilvio – guitar and synth

Come Down To Earth Choir (concert)
9:00 PM

Come Down To Earth Choir is a multilevel elaborate project based on co-operation of many environments. Several dozen people participate in the execution of Elżbieta Jabłońska’s conception. Their involvement and dialogue between them is the basis for the creative process. It serves as experimental space for the author and it is equivalent with the planned final result. The documentation, in the form of audio and visual recordings, gathered during the project constitutes the starting material for the creation of the final form of the hybrid installation. Registered and compiled animal rumblings, humming, howling, squealing and whining became a prototype for the composer, conductor and choir members invited to participate in the project. Wojtek Kotwicki, a musician working in the project, registered the sounds of animals living in the zoological garden in Bydgoszcz. The score created by the composer Marcin Gumiela is an attempt to translate these sounds into the language of musical notation. The score is a kind of inspiration and working on it assumes a possibility of interpretation by the conductor Agnieszka Sowa and the members of the Academic Choir of the University of Science and Technology in Bydgoszcz.

The project was created in co-operation with::
Marcin Gumiela - composition
Agnieszka Sowa - interpretation of the piece
Academic Choir of UTP - rendition
Wojtek Kotwicki - nagrania audio, wideo, grafika
Elżbieta Jabłońska - concept/idea/coordination

The recordings were made in a way that did not upset any of the recorded animals. The project was carried out as part of the scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from 2014.

Piotr Grygor (exhibition/audio installation)
10:30 PM

Piotr Grygor. Audio-visual artist. Sonifies plant life, makes music with insects, paints with brainwaves. Develops a bionic audiovisual improvisation method i.e. uses open and reactive environments bearing similarities to natural habitats and processes, providing generative and emergent outcomes.

EEGfx – exhibition
Graphics made of human brainwaves. Human brain appears to be the most complicated structure in the known universe and with our present abilities to easily monitor almost every life function just begs for being used as a source of generative audiovisual material. The idea of this graphics cycle was to transform dynamics of neurological processes directly to optical structures thus visualising the constant storm of electrical impulses of human brain.
EEG sensor, Pure Data programming environment, digital print, 2017.

Plant Chant – audio installation
Real-time plant life sonification. Delicate electrical activity of plant organisms controlling audio synthesis. There is a measurable electrical field in all living organisms, including plants. One can use it to control parameters of audio synthesis. All electronic music in its core is just using electrons' fluctuations and control voltages, which can be translated to audible frequencies, volume, sound textures etc. I translate plant life to sound using a sensitive galvanometer (known from lie detectors) that controls oscillators and filters thus producing instant change of rhythms and frequencies, according to fluctuations in plant's electrical activity, which changes with the amount of light, humidity or predators being around. Plants may not have sense organs as humans have eyes or ears, but their whole organisms seem to act as nervous systems.

Už jsme doma (concert)
9:00 PM

The first 5 years they spent on illegal scene in their country under the danger of jail from the communist totalitarian system.

In next period of their career they travelled to over 40 countries all over the world, they did many shows in Europe, in Japan or New Zealand. Most recently, they were in USA and played about 20 tours, a total of almost 700 shows. When the war broke out in Bosnia in 90’s, the band went to play to Gorazde on UN army tank. They played in Belorussia for dissidents.

Their shows are described as energetic, powerful, soulful, tight and crazy. They often use special costumes to entertain audience. Už jsme doma did a lot of other connected works, such as puppet movies scoring, theatre collaboration or playing with symphonic orchestra, creating an amazing pop-up book, etc. They created music for "Guzikowcy" movie.

An important part of UJD’s art is the painter Martin Velisek who is a non-playing member. His art is well respected all over the world, in many international galleries. All covers, posters or any visual presentation of UJD is in his hands.

Ecofilms about us
“The Tipping Point. Energy aNew.”,
dir. Łukasz Bluszcz (movie)
9:00 PM

It is the first Polish full-length documentary film about climate change and the inevitable energetic revolution. The creators clearly show the reasons the climate changes suddenly and the challenges our civilisation will have to face. We find out what tipped the balance of the climate on Earth and the consequences it caused. Is future based entirely on coal and oil real? Can we deal with smog and what has to happen in order to avoid a tragedy in the scale of the extinction of dinosaurs? Marcin Dorociński looks for answers to these and many other questions. The whole world, including Poland, faces a spectre of flood, drought, lack of drinking water and food. Warm radiators on chilly days, ice cream in the summer, light or running water, not to mention fuel for cars – we do not want to give up any of that but we will be forced to produce energy in different ways. The makers of the film draw the attention to alternative sources of energy and problems that proponents of these have to deal with. The film is a warning against a disaster and proposes solutions that might help avoid it. The changes are already happening and they are also visible in Poland. We just found ourselves at the tipping point.

Meeting with the director of the film
Łukasz Bluszcz
10:30 PM

Łukasz Bluszcz is a producer, director and documentary screenwriter associated with Vision House Productions. He worked as a journalist and a local producer for global information stations such as BBC, Al Jazeera, Discovery, Channel 5 and others. He is the author of screen scripts for documentaries such as ”Efekt Chopina” (BBC World, TVP2) and ”Był Bunt” (Al Jazeera, TVP Kultura). He producer and directed programs for Discovery Channel Poland: ”Przystanek Bieszczady”, ”Polska: Operacja Zmiana” and others. „The tipping point. Energy aNew” is his full-length director’s debut.

Lindha Kallerdahi
& John Holmström (concert)
GODZ. 22:00

Lindha Lindha is considered one of the most important and ground-breaking singers on the Swedish jazz and improvisation scene. Lindha’s special sound and way of singing has always attracted students. She has worked as song-coach both technically and, more importantly, spiritually on music schools and conservatories since 2001. Early on she came in touch with the free music field and made successful collaborations with the likes of Sonic Youth, Ikue Mori, Mats Gustavsson, Nina de Heney, Lise-Lotte Norelius, Mattias Windemo and Fredrik Ljungkvist among others.

John Holmström is a Swedish pianist who works in a broad spectrum of improvised music. With one foot in more traditional jazz and the other in free improvised music, he tries to create something in between, inside and above everything. Not because it´s a search for new unexplored territory within improvised music, but just because he can't help not to. As a student of classical music he tries to expand and include the works and language of the old masters in his music but approaches music from his roots as an MC within hip-hop and that of marital arts fighter. John has travelled the world playing his music and is known for his work within bands like Dark Horse, Om Tat Sat and Hurrakel.

Jonny Wartel Quartet (concert)
9:00 PM

Jonny Wartel Jonny Wartel plays saxophones and reeds. He toured Europe with saxophone quartet Position Alpha in the eighties. Toured in India and Europe with Indian Baul musicians in the eighties and nineties. Freelance in different styles of music: free jazz, impro, folk music, world music, rock’n’roll etc. Started Brötz together with Lolo Andersson 1993.

Karin Johansson Karin Johansson is a pianist and composer in improvised, experimental music and jazz from Sweden, who works with alternative techniques, uses preparations and objects; actively plays in several groups and collaborations, among others; Jonny Wartel 4, Ord, Finn Loxbo/Karin Johansson duo, Lisen Rylander Löve/Karin Johansson duo. Composes music for theatre and contemporary dance.

Yasuhito Mori, Yasuhito Mori, born in Tokyo, started playing in major jazz clubs in Tokyo while attending Aoyama Gakuin University and after graduation he played together with Masayuki Takayanagi and many other artists. In 1981 he moved to Sweden and has worked with Swedish jazz musicians. Has was a part of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz's Quartet with Kenny Barron and Ben Riley during their European tour in the summer of 1989. In 1994 Mori started a concert series called "Scandinavian Japan Connection" and has made many tours both in Japan and Sweden together with several Swedish and Japanese musicians.

Henrik Wartel became a member of the world famous trombonist Eje Thelins quartet when he was only twenty years old. They toured Europe frequently for several years and Henrik became a well-known and popular drummer among all kinds of musicians. He played rock’n’roll with Finish Jucka Tullonen, hardcore jazz with Bernt Rosengren, accompanied famous stars as Monika Zetterlund, Tomasz Stańko, Nisse Landgren, among many others. In Free jazz style he played with Roland Keijser and free impro with Position Alpha. In short: he plays with everyone everywhere.

Ecofilms about us
“The Salt of the Earth”,
dir. Juliano Ribeiro Salgado,
Wim Wenders (movie)
9:00 PM

Sebastião Salgado is a legendary Brazilian photographer, who travelled the world for 40 years. He documented the history of mankind in the times of dramatic changes. He witnessed wars, genocide, famine and forced migration. He made his name with a cycle of black and white photos devoted to the condition of man, where the author delved into the very heart of darkness showing suffering, cruelty and death. In the new photographic project Genesis, for the first time the photographer shifts away from social photography in favour of the beauty of the Earth. He photographs areas untouched by the Western civilisation as if they were taken from the Book of Genesis, where fauna and flora grows without obstacles. The film presents the work of Sebastião Salgado that made him on of the most famous photographers. It also shows his life and the transformation he underwent after his return to Brazil as well as his involvement in running a farm with his wife Léila. We look at Salgado from two perspectives: his son’s Juiano and Wim Wenders – the co-director of the film, who is also a photographer. Juliano plays a key role here. He often accompanied his father during his travels and the archive materials are presented in the film. He also reveals the secrets of their family life and analyses his relationship with his father in moving intimate scenes. The personal threads are completed with an objective perspective of Wenders, which makes the film a feast for the eyes. “The Salt of the Earth” becomes an exciting, multithreaded portrait of an icon of contemporary photography.

Zerang / Mełech / Wójciński (concert)
9:00 PM

Trio Zerang/Mełech/Wójciński played a tour in Poland. During that tour a recording session took place, when the musicians recorded collective improvisations. The music was released in 2017 with Multikulti Project label. The album “Zerang/Mełech/Wójciński 261034115” contains seven improvised tracks, where individual expression and characteristics language of each of the musicians point to the direction of the multi-themed voice and is a way of documenting the time of the first meeting of three so different imaginations full of respect and mutual esteem, devoid of complexes. It is obvious that Michael Zerang, who is one of the most versatile drummers and percussionists with many years of experience on the widely perceived free impro arena, makes the strongest mark. Piotr Mełech and Ksawery Wójciński are definitely ideal partners for a dialogue filled with curiosity of another person and the will discover. Each of them has different experience and a characteristic language andexpression.

Michael Zerang - drums
Piotr Mełech – clarinet, bass clarinet
Ksawery Wójciński – double-bass

Marina Cyrino / Merje Kägu / Madeleine Jonsson Gille (concert)
9:00 PM

Marina Cyrino explores flute playing through a diversity of interactions with light, movement, theatrical elements and objects. She is also a musician who has deep issues with writing her bio. It is like panic of reducing herself to an excerpt of herself, fear of being reduced into a few words like a showcase, fear of writing in the third person even if it is herself, who writes and puts quotes when she decides to speak with her own voice: "I spend part of my life playing music, another part trying to learn how to be a mountain. I have a particular interest in the word metamorphosis. Today I breathe, someday I won´t."

Heidi Ilves is a poet, contemporary jazz composer and vocal artist from Finland. She enjoys meaningful words and exploration of sounds. She thinks that the beauty of music lies between silence, acceptance, honesty and empathy. She believes that to have a childlike curiosity and a deep connection to the inner self is a priority as well as paradoxical truth.

Merje Kägu is an Estonian guitarist and composer, who studied jazz guitar at the Estonian Academy of Music and graduated the master program in improvisation at the Gothenburg Academy of Music and Drama. She has appeared with her original music and collaborated with inspiring musicians in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Scotland etc. “Playing music is something that attracts my attention and curiosity. I feel that inspires me. I like to unite compositions and improvisational bridge in between and create a dialogue that is intimate, personal and storytelling. Where words fail, music speaks. Musical truth is something dynamic.”

Nicola L. Hein & Joke Lanz (concert)
10:00 PM

Turntablist Joke Lanz creates autonomous sound-cells that melt into a language free of any function. He combines ritual reductionism with anarchistic playfulness, atmospheric soundscapes with cut-up noise and physicalness with unpredictability: Massive scratches, walls of sound, grooves, loops, noises and voice modulations! Best known for his international acclaimed Noise project 'Sudden Infant', Joke Lanz is presenting his work since 25 years all over the world. Born in Switzerland and currently operating out of Berlin, Joke Lanz is one of the most prolific and profound artists working in the border zones where performance and body art meet Improvisation and Noise.

Nicola L. Hein, a guitarist, soundartist and philosopher, is a very active player on the German and international arena of improvised music. He plays the guitar with his hands and plectrum but also with a lot of different objects: screws, rulers, iron wool, violin bow, abrasive paper, magnets and many other objects which are part of his musical vocabulary. The result is his very own world of sounds, which is using the rich potential of the guitar as a creator of sounds. The manual creation is a very important character of this sound world, which never gets distorted by the use of electronic effects. Moreover soundart (sound installations, site specific instruments, conceptual compositions for improvising musicians etc.) and the collaboration in different interdisciplinary settings (dance, installation, video art etc.) are an important focus of his art and form a second emphasis besides the work as a guitarist. Here different ideas from the world of philosophy (especially Wittgenstein, Rorty, Heidegger etc.) come into play with his musical aesthetics and form a discursive field that opens up artistic possibilities that lie beyond the possibilities of common musical practice.

Ecofilms about us
“Homo sapiens”,
dir. Nikolaus Geyrhalter (movie)
9:00 PM

What is going to be left of our civilisation once we all finally extinct? Empty spaces, abandoned buildings, shops, cinemas, hospitals, offices, schools, libraries, amusement parks and prisons. Ruins of cities will become more and more overgrown with plants. Overgrown landfills and water reservoirs or asphalt roads falling apart… After our extinction, the space, where we live will be once again taken over by nature from whom we brutally tore it away. The film was shot over the period of 4 years in Europe, USA, Japan and Argentina and it is a critical portrait of our civilisation. The film is constructed exclusively from precisely composed, static shots devoid of any commentary. We take a look of mankind’s life on Earth, its’ relationship with animals and other humans, wars. There are no pictures of private spaces. We only see public spaces: offices, sports halls, warehouses, schools, hospitals, shops. We discover the way our life is organised on the planet as well as the way the development of technology affects the degradation of our civilisation. We see abandoned or forgotten places and those recovered by nature and animals. The film is an in-depth look into the role of humans in the hour of ecological crisis. Do we still have a chance for change? What should we do in order to achieve that? Is it already too late? This meditative poetic essay about the finiteness of our species encourages us to reflect upon the fragility of a human being and the passing of time and the moment.

Stammberger Riemann Nakai
Electrique Trio (concert)
9:00 PM

Norbert Stammberger’s Electrique Trio is a concept of free improvisation on acoustic instruments with electronic extensions. The members, Teresa Riemann on drums and Daigo Nakai on double bass, have not played together before, but met before often on noise festivals.

Norbert R. Stammberger practices the intuitive style of composition and improvisation. He is a saxophonist, solo artist, improviser and freelance composer.

Teresa Riemann is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, performance artist and writer. eing tempted to break existing laws “how to do this right” this curious mind always seeks the full, uncensored expression, seeks to be free in every second and instead of reproducing patterns that have been acknowledged and lost a lot of their primary energy.

Daigo Nakai is an improvising musician/bass player, who has recently moved to Berlin from Melbourne. Daigo has performed as a session musician appearing in many recordings of ensembles including Melbourne based group Captain Apples and Miss Colombia, as well as a steady project, Ade Ish's Trio, of which Daigo has been a member for 4 years.

Pimpono Ensemble (concert)
9:00 PM

Pimpono Ensemble is a band from Copenhagen that consists of young musicians from Poland, Denmark and Norway, who are active on the European arena of improvise music and alternative jazz. The band’s music combines punk energy, freedom of improvisation, curiosity of experiment, beautiful nostalgic melodies, noise and post rock in the sound of a jazz orchestra. Szymon Gąsiorek’s compositions avant-garde meets pop culture.

Energetic music as well as collectively called out short phrases carry a message full of youthful idealism, non-conformism and dreams.

Jonas Due Steffensen - trumpet Maciej Kądziela - alt saxophone
Jędrzej Łagodziński - baritone saxophone
Rasmus Kjærgård Lund - tuba
Emil Palme - guitar
Franciszek Pospieszalski - double bass
Tomo Jacobson - double bass
Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek - drums

Ecofilms about us
“Princess Mononoke”,
dir. Hayao Miyazaki (movie)
9:00 PM

“Princess Mononoke” along with “Spirited Away” and “My neighbour Totoro” is the best-known film produced by Studio Ghibli. This film achieved great success and established the position of Miyazaki as the most popular creator of anime. The film deals with the problem of the coexistence of natural environment and mankind. The plot reveals that neither people with expansive attitude nor revenge-thirsty spirits of the forest are right. Eboshi is extremely bold and wants to show the superiority of humans and civilisation over the forces of nature. She is convinced that there is no place for gods in modern world. Yōkai on the other hand are blinded by revenge and want an open war, destruction and bloodshed. Ashitaka is the one who notices that and is capable to bring peace without taking either of the sides. The hatred in this animation has great power and is only capable of killing. The love on the other hand is stronger and omnipresent; it gives life but also takes it away. The film shows that people can live in harmony with nature under condition that both sides are capable of sacrifices. The film also condemns expansive economy that blinds with profits and makes people forget about the irrecoverable damage to the environment and old traditions. The picture has a strong pacifist message and reveals the futility of war and bloodshed. It is explicitly depicted through a group of samurai warriors. The film breaks the convention of noble and honourable warriors and shows them as a group of cruel and unscrupulous troublemakers, who storm every village they pass by for profit.

Marek Pospieszalski Quartet (concert)
9:00 PM

After many years of gathering inspirations and experience from other musicians, Marek Pospieszalski proudly presents his proprietary project. It is his own vision of music that draws from the boon of jazz and improvised music as well as many other creative genres. Mostly, it is based on collective playing, which is demonstrated by textures and multi-layered narration. The melodic base clashes with sonorism. There is no winking or hiding behind a cabaret convention. The music is genuine, intensive, brave and serious. Pospieszalski invited his musical “brother” Max Mucha, who is one of the most wanted double bass players of the new generation in Poland, and the top young musicians from the Berlin arena, pianist Elias Stemseder and drummer Max Andrzejewski.

Elias Stemeseder - piano
Max Mucha - double bass
Max Andrzejewski – drums